The Importance of a Professional Headshot

In the new age of social media, your profile picture is your cover letter. It’s the first thing prospective employers see and if it’s not professional, it will be the last. A professional headshot is more than important online, it determines, more than any other element of your profile or business page, whether you will be noticed or disqualified. The difference between an Instagram selfie and a professional head shot taken by a professional photographer, is the difference between success and failure.

There are two reasons why this is true; limited time and the buyers market that is the internet. Imagine a corporate recruiter searching prospects on LinkedIn. They can only devote so much of the workday to researching potential employees. If they’re looking for an accountant, 2.3 million people hold that title on LinkedIn. Let’s say they narrow it down to accountants in Charlotte, NC, that’s still 8,300 profiles to look through. There are too many prospects and not enough time, prospective employers have to make shortcuts. The easiest way to save time is to disqualify people quickly. Can you guess the quickest way to disqualify somone? Their profile picture. If your profile picture is a selfie taken in an Applebees bathroom, it doesn’t matter if you went to Harvard, your prospective employer has already moved on.

The first job of a professional headshot is to not get you disqualified. By not getting you disqualified and standing in contrast to a sea of poor quality profile pictures, your professional headshot gets you noticed, it’s second and more important job. Professional headshots make you stand out because they are taken by a PROFESSIONAL photographer. A head shot taken by a professional photographer is perfectly lit, cropped, and edited. Your blemishes are invisible, the light hits your new suit just right, and your smile is perfect. A professional photographer takes care of every detail big and small. Photography is an art and a science perfected by experience, there is no subsitute for the work of a professional. To really understand the importance of a professional head shot, let’s do a simple experiment. Take a look at the snapWerx headshot portfolio, keep that page open and think about the impressions you get from those photos. Now search a random job title on LinkedIn, like “journalist” or “account manager”. Look at those profile pictures, what impressions do those images give? How many are of the high quality of a snapWerx headshot? Who would you be more interested in hiring or doing buisness with, all other things being equal? By now you should realize the huge difference a professional head shot makes, but to understand the truly high quality of a snapWerx head shot, do one more thing. Search the “photographer” job title on LinkedIn. Look at the profile pictures of people who claim their profession as photoghraphy, how many meet the high quality of the professional headshots on snapWerx? Your headshot is everything, it’s your first impression online and if not taken by a professional, likely your last.

We at snapWerx are the best, we make interns look like CEOs and CEOs look like Mark Zuckerberg, or a really professional version of Mark Zuckerberg. We would love to work with you, so give us a call.